


beyond the smoke and ashes

by blackkat



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Developing Relationship, Dreamsharing, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:54:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23794948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “I must say, I expected rather more.”Cloud doesn’t even bother to open his eyes, refuses to look up at the figure standing over him. “Sephiroth said the same thing,” he tells Genesis. “And look where that got him.”
Relationships: Genesis Rhapsodos/Cloud Strife, Zack Fair & Cloud Strife, Zack Fair & Genesis Rhapsodos
Comments: 22
Kudos: 963





	beyond the smoke and ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Uintuva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uintuva/gifts).



> For the Final Fantasy VII gift exchange on my server! My giftee was Uintuva, and...hopefully I hit the high points of your prompt, Tuva.

“I must say, I expected rather more.”

Cloud doesn’t even bother to open his eyes, refuses to look up at the figure standing over him. “Sephiroth said the same thing,” he tells him. “And look where that got him.”

“Everything he deserved, I suppose.” Genesis sits down beside him, and there's a splash like he just put his feet in the water. The idea that he might not be wearing his ridiculous high-heeled boots is enough to get Cloud to crack an eye open, and—

Genesis looks just like he did when Cloud met him in Banora, or the handful of times he saw him in Midgar before everything fell apart. The soft sunlight turns his hair to coppery fire, and the red of his coat is dark embers, or maybe old blood.

The edge of peace to his face is new, though. Cloud’s never seen him smile with anything except cruel humor before, and right now he’s not. It’s not _nice_ , particularly—Cloud would call it mocking, or maybe sardonic, but it’s not cruel. The line of his shoulders is easier, too, and he’s staring out over the wide, eddying river, bare feet in the current.

“Why am I dreaming about you?” Cloud asks, a little miffed, because he gets few enough pleasant dreams as it is; he doesn’t want to share this one with someone who almost killed Zack.

Genesis snorts, leaning back on his hands, and his red gloves are missing. He looks weirdly naked without them. More human, maybe. Cloud doesn’t know what to think of that. “Perhaps I'm dreaming about you,” he counters, and slants Cloud a smirk. “I do have to fill my quota of nightmares, being a repentant villain, don’t I?”

Cloud rolls his eyes, but after a long moment he sits up as well, glancing sideways to check that his sword is somewhere nearby. It’s beside him, and Cloud lets out a breath, focuses his attention on Genesis again with a frown. “This is definitely _my_ dream,” he says. “I’d know, because I'm the one having it.”

The curl of Genesis’s mouth is _definitely_ mocking. “It does look incredibly…bland,” he allows, and Cloud pulls a face at him. Genesis doesn’t even seem to deign to notice; all of his attention is fixed on the water, on the sunlight. There are lilies growing beneath the closest tree, crimson and trumpet-shaped and lovely, and Genesis reaches out like he’s going to touch one, only to pull back at the last moment.

“Well,” he says. “For a dream not my own, it certainly brings back unhappy memories.”

Cloud grimaces, but Genesis doesn’t look like he’s remembering going crazy, defecting from Shinra, and murdering a bunch of people including his adoptive parents, so at least there’s that. Instead, his eyes are on the horizon, and he’s frowning.

“Do you feel that?” he asks.

Turning to follow his gaze, Cloud cocks his head. “The Lifestream?” he asks, and—he can feel it particularly well when he’s dreaming, but right now, somehow, it seems…closer. Stronger, maybe.

That’s not normal.

“Where are you right now?” he demands, and when Genesis glances at him narrowly, he makes a frustrated sound, not able to put it into words. “In the real world. Where are you?”

Genesis frowns at him, somewhere between miffed and confused. “Waiting,” he says. “As I have been for years.”

“That’s a _what_ , not a _where_ ,” Cloud says, annoyed, and Genesis snorts, cocks his head. The careful dusting of grey eyeshadow looks like ashes in the sunlight.

“Where are _you_ , then, Strife?” he asks pointedly, and—

Cloud can't remember.

Startled, he pauses, trying to think. Not Midgar, not the bar with Tifa. Not on the road, or in Banora, or—

“I don’t—” he starts.

Genesis looks away, reaches up. He presses a hand over his shoulder, fingers tracing a wound Cloud can't see. “The wandering soul knows no rest,” he says. It sounds like a quote. It makes Cloud scowl, and when Genesis catches it the slant of his smirk is obvious.

“Genesis,” Cloud says, frustrated. “Just tell me. I think we’re—”

The water ripples, and the sunlight reflecting off the surface blinds Cloud for an instant. He takes a step back, startled, and blinks the glare away. Opens his eyes—

The glow of green is everywhere.

Dread rises, with fury behind it. Cloud knows exactly where he is, knows the precise _moment_. The door just closed on Hojo’s retreating figure, and this one brief moment of clarity was when Cloud first really _realized_ what was happening, what _had_ happened. Years of being a doll in a mako tank, a test subject, an _experiment_ , and then Cloud had opened his eyes and _known_.

He lost the knowledge later, barely managed to scrape enough brain cells together to think he was Zack, but…he got it back eventually, along with everything else.

Slowly, painfully, he turns his head, and _this_ feels like the dream, like it can't be real. Like the garden with Genesis was the waking world, and this—this is the nightmare that’s never quite gone away.

The sight of Zack floating in the tank beside him does nothing to change that feeling.

Cloud wants to reach out to him, to cry out, to call. There's no way he can speak, though, and the movement of his hand through the mako feels as slow as if he’s trying to fight through honey, far too slow to be make a difference. His fingers hit cold glass—

It’s not the edge of a river, this time, the dream. A lake, instead, ringed with apple trees, and Genesis is stretched out on the shore beneath one, eyes closed. He’s propped up on the roots, asleep despite how uncomfortable it must be. Cloud takes a step closer before realizing suddenly, starkly, that the red coat is gone, and the dark turtleneck beneath is torn, the sleeve on one side sliced cleanly through. Beneath, the flesh is equally torn, weeping red, and alarm flares.

“You're _bleeding_ ,” Cloud says, dropping to one knee beside him. “What happened?”

There's a momentary pause, and Genesis’s eyes slide open, mako-blue and glowing. He stares up at Cloud without comprehension for a long beat, then then sighs, running his fingers through his hair. His eyes fall shut, and he looks for all the world like someone who was really, truly asleep.

“What was that?” he asks. “Don’t heroes have better things to be doing than invading a fallen villain’s dreams?”

“It’s kind of bland, isn't it?” Cloud says, perfectly flat.

Genesis snorts, tipping his head to look up at Cloud, and the curve of his mouth is a dangerous thing. “Banora Whites,” he says. “Even larger than my father’s tree.” His expression twists, something cruel showing through the edges for an instant before he closes his eyes again, a sharp-edged regret rising to replace it.

“I heard he died for you,” he says, and it’s as bland as the dreamscape around them.

Cloud’s throat feels tight. Zack. He can only mean Zack.

“I heard he saved you,” he counters, and it cuts like broken glass. Zack saved both of them, was a hero in a way neither of them will ever be.

“He did,” Genesis admits without opening his eyes. “But more than that, he found what I had lost and gave it back to me. A dream, and my honor as a SOLDIER.” A thin crack of blue shows through long lashes as Genesis looks up at him, and he smiles. “And to think, I once hated puppies.”

Cloud thinks of Zack in the mako, the bright green glow, and has to breathe carefully. The air here smells like bright spring grass, crushed underfoot. “You're still bleeding,” he says.

Genesis doesn’t move. “I woke up in Hollander’s lab,” he tells Cloud. “Apparently that’s where is was in the real world.”

It doesn’t make sense. They're dreaming, here, but—in the waking world they shouldn’t have their memories, shouldn’t _know_.

But Cloud remembered every moment of what was going to happen when he woke up. There wasn’t a moment when he could forget.

“Did you remember everything?” he asks, and Genesis smiles like a cat with a mouse beneath its claws.

“Dreams of the morrow hath the shattered soul,” he says, and Cloud rolls his eyes. It makes Genesis chuckle, and he sits up, red hair falling in his face. He looks up at Cloud through the veil of it, and says, “I killed him.”

Hollander. Someone like Hojo, Cloud thinks, and has to swallow. He doesn’t know everything about Genesis, but he remembers that much. “So you did remember.”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Genesis smirks at the look Cloud shoots him, then turns his head. Cloud looks, too, and his gaze falls on the trumpet-shaped lilies growing along the lake’s edge. They're not red this time, but a deep gold, and a touch of unease slips down Cloud’s spine. It’s not his dream, isn't his imagination in control, but—

Everything else looks normal, and those are the only things out of place.

“Where were you before you want to sleep?” he asks, and Genesis’s gaze flickers back to him.

“Entombed,” he says. “In a coffin of my own making.”

Cloud kind of wants to shake him. “That’s the _how_ ,” he retorts, and Genesis laughs, low and entirely amused, lifting a hand to cover it.

“Perhaps you’ll get the _where_ from me next time, then,” he says, and Cloud frowns.

“Next time?” he asks. “But—”

“Hey, Spike!” Zack calls, and Cloud has half a moment to brace himself before a thick arm grabs him, hauling him into Zack's side. There's a brief second of surprise, and then Zack says, “Did they feed you growth hormones while I was away or something, Spike? You grew!”

“You don’t need to sound _that_ surprised by it,” Cloud says, rolling his eyes, but the last thing he’s about to do is shake Zack off of him. He puts a hand up instead, gripping Zack’s forearm, and asks, “How was your mission?”

He remembers this too, if more faintly. Zack on deployment, coming back and immediately grabbing for him, dragging him everywhere. Cloud loved it, at first the attention from a SOLDIER 2nd Class, and then just _Zack_. Zack's his best friend. Nothing will ever change that.

The height is new, though. Something kept, across the dreams. The scars are still there, too. Cloud can feel them pulling at his skin, like reminders.

Not that he’d ever forget.

“Sephiroth almost chopped my head off,” Zack says cheerfully, and it takes all of Cloud’s control not to flinch. “Angeal is probably going to tell me to learn how to dodge better.”

Cloud remembers this, but he doesn’t _remember_ this. Not this exact time. Not this moment. It faded, naturally, rather than being taken, but it still faded. And now—

“What’s the date?” he asks abruptly.

Zack glances at him, but doesn’t seem to think anything of the question. “I have no idea. I don’t think I've slept in a week, sorry.”

Cloud wonders if Hollander is dead yet. Wonders, too, if actions like that carry over. If these not-dreams are connected, they might.

Maybe it will change something.

“It’s springtime, isn't it?” he asks, because he can feel that much in the air. “Are you going to go see Aerith?”

Zack blinks, and that makes him pull away, look down at Cloud. “Who’s Aerith?” he asks, confused.

 _Oh_ , Cloud thinks, something sinking in the pit of his stomach. It’s that early, then. That’s…not what he was expecting.

“It wasn’t you that got a girlfriend?” he asks, pretending at confusion. “Sorry, must have been Kunsel.”

Zack laughs, leaning on him a little harder. “Kunsel? With a girlfriend?” he asks. “This I have to see.”

Well. It’s an opportunity. Cloud grins back, and says, “I think I heard she was in that old church, down in the Sector 5 slums.”

Zack's expression is all cheerful mischief. “I’ll go right to the source, then. Thanks, Cloud.”

A flicker of movement in one of the windows above them catches Cloud’s eye before he can answer, and he looks up just in time to see a sweep of red. Watches, careful, until that same red reappears at the next window, and it’s Genesis, Genesis before everything, before his fall and his recovery. He’s walking with Angeal, his whole body turned towards Angeal like he’s the sun, and Cloud can't help but look, can't help but think that the Genesis beneath the apple tree looked—better, maybe. More whole. More settled. Less likely to cut people with his sharp edges.

“Oh, hey, it’s Angeal,” Zack says, and straightens. He gives Cloud a smile. “Want an introduction?”

Meeting Angeal means meeting Genesis, and Cloud isn't sure he wants to know this younger Genesis, untempered and unpredictable. “I have to head to training,” he says, can't quite manage to make it an apology. “Sorry, Zack—”

He turns to face Zack and is gone.

“Now I _know_ you're doing it to annoy me,” Genesis says, seated on a rock with his long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. There are mako-green lilies growing up around the stones scattered across the landscape, but it’s otherwise barren, one plain expanse of green rolling towards the distant mountains.

He has his coat this time, Cloud notes. Probably for the better.

“It’s Nibelheim,” Cloud says. “The reactor is over those mountains there.” He sinks down by Genesis’s feet, not sure what else to do. “I saw you,” he says, because he can't think of anything else.

Genesis raises a brow at him, like that will hide the curve of the smirk he’s trying not to let show. “Did you enjoy it?” he asks, and Cloud huffs and rolls his eyes, ignoring the heat in his cheeks.

“Are we changing things?” he asks instead. “I sent Zack to go meet Aerith sooner. Years sooner, maybe. I don’t…”

Doesn’t know what that will do, how it will change anything, if it will help. But it’s some attempt, in the handful of moments he has. Little seconds, and he wonders what happens on the other side of them. Does the Cloud from a dream vanish, and the original keep on living? But—

Zack noticed a change. What if that stays?

Genesis hums, lazy as a cat, and his eyes _burn_.

“Hollander was still dead, when I woke up,” he says.

Cloud looks at him. Breathes, and thinks about walking up Hojo’s lab. Thinks of all the things he could do with awareness and a steady hand and a will to fight.

“My turn next, then,” he says, and killing Hojo won't stop everything, might not even stop _anything_ by the time he has Zack and Cloud, but—

Well. At the very least it will make Cloud feel better.

Genesis tips his head, watching him, and says, “Well. In that case, good hunting.”

Cloud looks up at him, tugging at the short grass. Springtime, and it feels like it, a trace of warmth to the chill air that makes Cloud’s heart feel lighter. “Why us?” he asks quietly.

For a long moment, Genesis doesn’t answer. Then, careful, he curls his fingers in his red gloves and leans forward. Slides off the rock, landing on one knee right in front of Cloud, and asks, “Are you really going to waste a chance on _whys_ , Cloud? I think we owe him more than that.”

Him. Zack. Who saved both of them, who was a hero, who Cloud refuses with all his heart and soul to let die again. He grits his teeth, jerks his head in a quick nod, and asks, “Where are you?”

“Beneath Midgar,” Genesis says, and the straight answer is almost shocking. It makes Cloud pull back slightly, and Genesis’s smirk has a shadow of something rueful to it. “I took up Sephiroth and Angeal’s burden. When this planet needs me again, I’ll return.”

“It needs you now,” Cloud says stubbornly, though he doesn’t even know if it’s true. This—dreaming, and this waking, they could be for nothing. Maybe in the real world nothing at all has changed.

But the Lifestream burns around them, as bright as spring grass, and Cloud can hear a river in the distance, swift water over stone. It makes him think, and it makes him _feel_ , and even if everything is exactly as it was when they wake up for the last time, at least he knows where he’s going next. Beneath Midgar, somewhere, but—

Cloud has faith he’ll figure it out.

“Even if the morrow is barren of promises, nothing shall forestall my return,” Genesis murmurs, and his smirk is wicked, just a little wry. He opens his mouth, but Cloud can feel what he’s going to say, doesn’t care to hear it.

He kisses Genesis, feeling bold. Feeling hopeful. Steals the words before they can leave Genesis’s mouth, buries his fingers in bright red hair, and feels Genesis’s laughter against his lips.

“We’re going to save him,” he says, and Genesis rests their foreheads together, closes his eyes. The grey across his eyelids still looks like ash, but—

Things always grow better in a wildfire’s wake.

“We will,” he says, and just for that, just because he can and he wants to and it’s what feels right, Cloud kisses him again. Drags him down into the new grass and fits their mouths together, feels Genesis’s laughter like a bell rung inside his chest. Tugs, sharp, at his hair when they part, but it just makes Genesis smile, taunting.

“And to think,” he says, “I had such low expectations of this turning out well.”

Cloud rolls his eyes. “That sounds like a you problem,” he says, unimpressed, and Genesis snorts, eyes bright with humor.

“I'm going to make Sephiroth _cry_ , next time I see him,” he says, and his smile is full of teeth. “We can remain friends, but I'm going to make him pay through the nose for it.”

Cloud can't help but laugh, and Genesis’s hair is soft between his fingers, his skin warm. There’s no wound in his shoulder, and when Cloud drags him in to settle on his lap, there's no hint of hesitation. “Get a hit in from me, too,” he says, and Genesis kisses him fiercely. There are teeth in that, too.

“With _pleasure_ ,” he breathes, right across Cloud’s lips, and Cloud kisses back, more than willing to take it as a promise.


End file.
